Travelling by Rail or Coach

Voyages Sncf UK is a very good source of information for rail travel in France and will allow you to book on line. There is also a Motorail service (French page) if you want to take your car with you. You can phone to make this arrangement (use the first UK page for this) up to 6 months in advance or you can book online by filling in the form on the French page. You have to load your car at the Paris Bercy Station for this service and then you take a separate passenger train to get yourself to the same destination to pick it up the following day. If you find the whole thing a little confusing then it is better to call the number on the UK site to talk it through.

You can also visit the French rail operators TGV to explore other options for rail travel.

Coach or Bus Travel for France, Europe and the UK

Cheap Fuel in France

The rising cost of fuel in the UK and France is hitting hard, most of the cost being tax of course. But with no signs from the English or French governments looking to reduce tax and ease the fuel burden it is a good idea to at least find out where to get the cheapest fuel. To that purpose the French government have released a website where you can search for cheap fuel. The link above will get you to the website, it is in French but is still pretty easy to use, you can put in a commune, ours for example is Castelnaudary, select a department from the drop down list or just click on the map.

Worth a look to see if you can reduce your fuel costs and probably more practical to use at a stopover or your destination, even if its only to fill up before heading back home or to fill up your hire car near an airport.

French Weather

It is always useful to know what weather you are likely to encounter on your travels and for French weather information the principle weather web site in France is meteofrance.com . You can look at the region of interest by entering a postal code or, town name, for example Castelnaudary which is located in Aude in France can be found by either entering the town name or its post code 11400.

Another useful web site in English is the Yahoo weather station weather.yahoo.com which again allows you to select the region or place of interest for specific information on your chosen destination and up to 6 days weather using the extended forecast. The Weather Channel provides a 10 day forecast which you can access using the links below or by clicking on 10 Day Forecast.

A 'Vide Grenier' actually means an attic sale or is the equivalent of a car boot sale in the UK. But the French do things a bit differently, so more often than not you will find that the 'Vide Grenier' is spread throughout the entire village and is a mix of professional and amateur sellers offering pretty much anything you can think of. There can also be entertainment and hot food available at some of the larger locations. They are probably every antique hunters' favourite way to spend a day. Just sifting through the offerings looking for a real bargain.

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